Blog Post

Messages that Move

The advocacy community has gone mad for story. But stories are only as strong as the latest retelling. While compelling characters and evocative details give our stories life, it is email subject lines, tweets, Facebook posts, and headlines that give them legs.

The best stories have a clear message—or moral—that can be repeated over coffee or conveyed in 140 characters. And the messages that move tend to inspire and empower.

In today’s web 2.0 world, our supporters are the most powerful communications asset we have. Broadcast mediums are shrinking, and people are turning to social networks for information about everything from politics to human rights. But the social web is awash in content, and the only way to break through the noise is to build a chorus of voices carrying your tune.

Stories represent a vast improvement over the facts and figures we used to rely on to convince people to pay attention to our issues. Cognitive research has shown that stories circumvent our nitpicky critical brains and connect to feelings, which are the key engaging supporters as evangelists, and, ultimately, to changing hearts and minds.

However, while you might keep an audience rapt for five minutes with a riveting video about the tar sands, or a compelling first-person account of sea-level rise impacts on a coastal community, supporters are unlikely to recount feature-length stories to their friends around the water cooler.

To really engage audiences as activists and ambassadors, you have to equip them with a shareworthy message.

At Resource Media, we have a recipe for creating messages that move people: values+problem+solution. It’s simple enough to work for any medium, and does three key things:

Builds an emotional connection

Describes a clear threat to something we care about

Ends on a hopeful note

The climate community is great at describing the problem. Witness recent headlines about Arctic ice melt, rising food prices, catastrophic wildfires. We have spent the past decade describing the monumental challenge facing mankind in exhaustive detail.

This tweet from @Oxfam is a good example: #Biofuels targets increase costs of running your car, increase world #hunger, & don't help tackle #climate change ht.ly/dNm6c

It makes a strong case against biofuels—often touted as a greener alternative to fossil fuels. But it takes one solution off the table without offering another. The reader is left feeling frustrated rather than empowered.

Now consider this Facebook post from Moms Clean Air Force: America's resolve has gotten us through the most difficult times, and it will help us build a clean future! We already have the solution…RENEWABLE ENERGY! LIKE and SHARE if you believe renewable energy is our children's future!

It appeals to values like patriotism and family, and puts forth renewable energy as a solution to the challenge Moms Clean Air Force was created to address, air pollution. It gives the reader hope.

Resource Media has seen the power of hope in campaigns ranging from marine conservation to food policy. Supporters are hit with bad news on a daily basis, and solutions are welcomed like rain on parched earth.

Consider 350.org, which has built a super active community of 210,000 Facebook fans in support of its mission to advance “the solutions that science & justice demand.” Amidst news about record-breaking drought and disappearing glaciers, it is the hopeful messages that fans tend to share.

In September, for instance, the four top posts on 350.org’s Facebook page were about the economic and environmental benefits of solar and wind power, touting them as win-win solutions. They generated more than 2,400 shares each, and nearly 3,000 likes, versus an average of 770 shares and 1,500 likes for all posts that month.

These wildly popular posts did more than just advance clean energy as a solution to the climate crisis—they outlined concrete steps to realize that potential while appealing to supporters’ can-do attitude. One solar post urged fans to join the rooftop revolution, and said “Just 20 minutes. Let’s build this.” The other talked about the importance of subsidies to help America lead the world in solar, and said “change is possible.”

As Climate Access members know firsthand, climate communications are challenging. The problems are big, and the solutions complicated. But supporters are eager to help, and eager to believe they can make a difference.

A problem message might get shared—we’ve all gotten the “check your cupboard for canned tomatoes with BPA in them” chain email from an aunt—but solution messages are the ones that really move people and get moved around, because they soothe our fears and fuel our aspirations.

Other Blog Posts

Climate Works Australia is an NGO that generally produces research and reports modeling the implementation of low carbon pathways and how Australia can be successful in the post-carbon economy. However, after a meeting with UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres they realized there needs to be a wider conversation about a post-carbon world within communities and business audiences as well as among policy wonks and academics.

Their answer to this thorny question has been to develop an Australia-wide campaign called Generation Yes, which aims to start a national conversation about how Australia can achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Climate Access’ Amy Huva spoke with ClimateWorks’ Adam Majcher to delve deeper into their engagement and outreach strategy.

The role of faith groups as voices in the climate conversation has been encouraging over the last few years. From the increased profile of Dr. Katharine Hayhoe as a leading trusted evangelical voice on climate to the work of Interfaith Power and Light chapters across the U.S. and the Pope’s moral leadership on climate, the moral religious call for climate action grows stronger.

The smell of wood smoke wafting into my house on a September afternoon should be a cozy and comforting aroma, however combined with the 101 degree heat, I knew the smoke wasn’t coming from a neighbor’s fireplace.

Climate Access is an initiative of The Resource Innovation Group's Social Capital Project. We are grateful to our founding partners, the Stonehouse Standing Circle and the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society.